No country had been engaged in macro-constitutional politics so intensively for so long as Canada. Macro-constitutional politics, unlike ordinary constitutional politics are about the very nature of the political community on which the constitution is to be based. When constitutional politics is at the macro level, the constitutional question tends to dwarf all other issues. Except for a few short intervals Canada has been engaged in constitutional politics since the mid-1960s. Through this experience and most recently. Canadians have adopted a new constitutionalism requiring popular participation in constitution-making. Thus, as Canadians enter the fifth, and what they hope will be, the final round of macro-constitutional politics, they will find out whether they share enough in common to constitute themselves a single sovereign people.

In this paper, we investigate the phenomenon of party switchers in the Canadian House of Commons. With the most extensive dataset on party-switching MPs (1867–2015), we answer the following questions: What are the electoral trajectories of party switchers? Have their prospects changed over time? We assess whether the historical dynamics of the Canadian party system explain changes in the incidence and fate of party switchers since 1867, hypothesizing that both the rate of party switching and the electoral fortunes of floor crossers decline over time. The evidence accords with our second hypothesis more strongly than our first. Party switching has become slightly less common, but the electoral consequence has become much more severe.

This note addresses questions relating to the level of women's political activity and specific obstacles that restrict it. The work of Black and McGlen, showing a decrease in the traditional participation differences between Canadian men and women, is replicated over an expanded series of six national election studies. The results challenge the suggestion that there has been a decline in difference over time, and there is an attempt to account for this lingering distinction between the genders. Data are presented which indicate that the presence of children in the home has a much more constraining impact upon women's political activity than upon that of men.

Constitutional commentators who interpret conflicts between individuals and communities in terms of a struggle between individual and collective rights do not accurately capture the jurisprudence developed in the courts regarding such conflicts. Such conflicts are more clearly analyzed when they are framed in terms of identity-related differences. The difference perspective has three advantages over the “individual versus collective rights” perspective. First, the difference perspective accurately retrieves the courts' reasoning by framing it in terms of the values actually at stake. Second, it avoids the traditional dichotomy between individual and collective rights. Third, it provides a means to compare claims of individuals and groups without reducing group interests to individual interests.

The partisan preferences of Canadian Jews are compared with those of Catholics and Protestants using a sample of 218,738 electors obtained by merging 235 Gallup surveys from the period 1953–1983. The hypothesis guiding the analysis, that Jews are more likely to support left and centre parties (specifically the NDP and the Liberals), is derived from theories that seek to explain Jewish political inclinations. Controlling for the influence of education, province of residence (Quebec or not) and family union membership, this hypothesis is confirmed. Moreover, it is found that in Quebec Jews concentrate their votes to a greater degree than Protestants or Catholics and that the Liberals are the beneficiaries of that concentration; outside Quebec, Catholics and Jews have similar preferences that are markedly distinct from those of Protestants. The Jewish vote is best explained by combining left/right and centre/periphery models.

Cet article propose de montrer la transformation de l'idée d'interculturalisme au Québec de sa genèse dans les groupes communautaires montréalais des années 1960 jusqu’à son intégration dans la politique des partis au début du XXIe siècle à l'Assemblée nationale du Québec. Cette sociologie historique insiste sur la course à relais entre divers acteurs qui sont entrés en concurrence afin d'en définir le sens et les principes. L'histoire de l'idée d'interculturalisme montre en relief quatre périodes distinctes : la genèse du vocabulaire de « l'interculturel » (1963–1977), sa diffusion hors des groupes communautaires (1978–1988), la transition sémantique vers « l'interculturalisme » (1988–2006) et la polarisation politique à son sujet alors que se lèvent au Québec les controverses identitaires (2007–2018).

The determinants of fulfilling campaign promises in Canada over the period 1994–2015 are analyzed in a comparative perspective. All other factors being equal, we find that promises to reduce government spending are more likely to be fulfilled by the Conservatives than by the Liberals. Majority and re-elected governments facing a budget surplus are more likely to fulfill their election promises than minority and newly elected governments facing a budget deficit. Promises are more likely to be fulfilled at the start than at the end of a mandate. We also find a small but noticeable increase in the rate of fulfilling campaign promises over time.

Most literature on juvenile delinquency describes it as essentially a product of the lower socio-economic classes. While there has been some speculation over the incidence and quality of middle-class delinquency, what evidence exists is largely impressionistic. Nevertheless, the prevailing view is that delinquency among middle-class youth has increased in recent years. The present paper seeks a sociological and theoretical perspective to help account for the dominant forms of juvenile delinquency among middle-class youth. It attempts also to explain the emergence and the particular qualities of middle-class delinquency as a consequence of structural changes taking place in the larger society.

Accounting for middle-class delinquency in North America requires an understanding of the dominant culture of middle-class youth. Structural changes in society over the last half-century have produced opportunities for extensive adolescent peer-group participation and the emergence of a mass youth culture. During the growth of this youth culture, in which the majority of middle-class teenagers participate, there have emerged, jointly, both delinquent and non-delinquent patterns of behaviour. It is the thesis of this paper that the bulk of middle-class delinquency occurs in the course of customary, non-delinquent activities and falls within the limits of adolescent group norms. Moreover the knowledge of both delinquent and non-delinquent patterns in the youth culture is widely shared among middle-class teenagers. Thus, in order to account for middle-class delinquency one need not look for a separate “delinquent subculture.”

The role of “interest” or “pressure” groups in the United States congressional system has been subjected to analysis by American political scientists for at least three decades, but it is only in the last four or five years that studies have appeared of their role in the British cabinet system, and only one major study of an interest group has appeared in Canada. This disparity in interest is the result no doubt of the more vocal and widespread manifestation of the influence of pressure groups in the wide-open congressional system, but one has the uncomfortable feeling that their less obtrusive role in the cabinet system has been equated with a lesser importance in the political process.

Like the sociologist, the political scientist may be interested in groups as organizational or power systems, in the sense that they are private governments, or he may extend or even limit his interest to the relations of these private governments with each other and with public governments, particularly in the manner and extent of their influence on public policy. For the political scientist concerned with public administration, interest will be extended to the role, if any, played by groups in the execution of public policy. From all three aspects, the medical profession as an interest group is a happy choice for examination, for not only does it provide insights into private government, and have a major influence on public policy, but it seems safe to state that in Canada, at least, no other private group is as deeply involved in public administration, and this despite the fundamental antipathy between the healing arts and bureaucracy.

Tonight I am going to exercise the prerogative of the President to make an address to a large extent unornamented by the extensive documentation and citations which perhaps too often go by the name of scholarship. My primary theme is our immigration policy. In developing this, I am going to deal mainly with the period from 1896 to 1910, since that is the period over which policy shifted from one at least theoretically laissez-faire to the selective policy inherent in the Immigration Act of 1910. My method will be to consider for a space the characters of two men, to follow that by narrative and analysis respecting the changes which occurred and then to draw together what seem to me to be the morals of the story.

When Clifford Sifton took over the Ministry of the Interior in the autumn of 1896, entry to Canada was proscribed to three classes of persons only: the diseased; the criminal or vicious; and those likely to become public charges. Even these might find entry not too difficult if they went the right way about gaining it. The controls exercised under the law by the Minister covered only entries by ocean ports and here the general assumption was that only steerage passengers were immigrants. There was no control over those who entered by railway. Once immigrants coming by steamship had passed inspection and had become “landed immigrants” deportations were administered by the Department of the Interior with the assistance of the Department of Justice and generally on complaint of the municipal authorities. It was only after Clifford Sifton had left the cabinet in early 1905 that a sequence of events occurred forcing a series of restrictive measures which were finally embodied in the Immigration Act of 1910.

This article provides a systematic examination of the social bases and ideological and policy orientations of the Reform party of Canada through a study of the attitudes of delegates attending its 1992 national assembly. We identify the core political attitudes of Reform activists, and examine whether their positions on policy matters are distinctive and whether they are characterized by internal cohesion or division. We then examine the party's mobilization strategy to determine the extent to which this strategy produces systematic cleavages among party activists. Our analysis reveals that Reform promotes a distinctive position on a number of salient political issues. However, we also challenge the view that Reform activists are united by a unidimensional right-wing ideology. We conclude by discussing the impact of party mobilization on future divisions within the party.

Which candidate ought to be elected in a single-member constituency if all that we take into account is the order in which each of the electors ranks the various candidates? The most reasonable answer, I think, is that that candidate ought to be elected who, on the whole or on the average, stands highest on the electors' schedules of preferences.

At the very outset of the argument we try to move from the is to the ought and to jump the unbridgeable chasm between the universe of science and that of morals. Some discussion of this step should be given, even though it does no more than point out the assumptions under which the jump is made.

We assume that, in a constituency which is to elect a single member, we know the order in which the candidates are ranked on the schedule of preferences of each elector. If the electors had only been allowed to cast a single vote and the record of this was all the information at our disposal, inevitably, I think, we would have to conclude that the candidate most deserving of election was the one with the greatest number of first-preference votes. As against this, however, our assumption will be that each elector expresses his attitude to each of the candidates in the field, and that we have this record of the electors' attitudes.

Abstract. The purpose of this article is to explore the issue of alignment in Canadian foreign policy. The main research question is whether Canada's responses to foreign crises aligned with those of its allies, and if so, which allies and why. The study proceeds in two steps. First, it tests four major theoretical perspectives that could explain Canada's behaviour: continentalism, transatlantism, the Anglosphere argument and unilateralism. By performing a computer-generated content analysis, the article assesses these propositions by focusing on and comparing Canada's official declarations to those of the United States, France and Britain to six foreign crises that occurred between 2004 and 2011. Second, the analysis identifies whether there is a difference between the Harper and Martin governments' responses to foreign crises. The research provides quantitative and qualitative evidence suggesting that Canada's foreign policy alignment primarily tends toward a transatlantic orientation. It also shows that the Harper government was less in line with Washington than was the previous Liberal government of Paul Martin, which challenges the conventional wisdom of Canadian foreign policy.

Résumé. Cet article explore l'enjeu de l'alignement en politique étrangère canadienne et pose la question de recherche suivante : est-ce qu'à l'égard des crises étrangère le Canada s'aligne sur les positions de ses alliés et, si oui, lesquels et pourquoi? Tout d'abord, l'article présente quatre perspectives théoriques susceptibles d'expliquer le comportement du Canada : le continentalisme, le transatlantisme, la thèse de l'anglosphère et celle de l'unilatéralisme. En ayant recours à une analyse de contenu assistée par ordinateur, cet article teste la validité de ces propositions en comparant les déclarations officielles du Canada à celles des États-Unis, de la France et de l'Angleterre à l'égard de six crises survenues entre 2004 et 2011. Ensuite, l'analyse cherche à identifier s'il y a une différence entre les réponses des gouvernements Harper et Martin à l'égard de ces crises. L'étude fournit des données empiriques de type qualitatif et quantitatif qui suggèrent que le Canada a eu une orientation transatlantique lors de la gestion de ces crises internationales. Elle montre également que le gouvernement Harper est moins aligné sur les positions de Washington que ne le fut le précédent gouvernement libéral, ce qui ébranle certaines idées communément admises en politique étrangère canadienne.

Abstract. Effective representation requires that representatives learn of the needs and preferences of their constituents and communicate their representative accomplishments back to those constituents. This article demonstrates how Canadian political parties, specifically their constituency associations in the ridings, assist MPs in their representative functions by facilitating communication between MPs and constituents. Representatives of local “sectors” on constituency association executives provide a means for focused communication between MPs and constituents. The result is that constituency associations enhance the service, policy and symbolic responsiveness of many MPs in their ridings. This article therefore elucidates the largely unrecognized role of Canadian parties' constituency organizations as important democratic and representational actors in the ridings.

Résumé. Pour être efficace, il faut que les élus (1) comprennent les besoins et les préférences de leurs électeurs et (2) communiquent leurs activités en tant que parlementaires. Cet article montre à quel point les partis politiques canadiens, surtout les comités au niveau des comtés individuels, sont importants comme instrument pour réaliser ces tâches. Les comités organisent la communication entre un député et les groupes locaux qui s'intéressent au sujet en question. Pour résumer, les comités de militants fournit un element crucial au succès d'un politicien dans son comté. C'est une dimension de l'activité que les politiologues ont tendance à ignorer.

The Internet, operating as a technologically embedded laboratory of human activity, provides social scientists with a new set of analytical tools by which to test and replicate models of social and political behaviour, with data extrapolated from the regularities of online activity, organization and information exchange. This research note demonstrates that virtual policy networks, arrangements of public interaction between mutually supporting actors that form around policy activities, exist on the Web. In addition, the note considers whether or not Canadian virtual policy networks are mimicking their respective national policy communities through the application of a methodological approach referred to as link structure analysis. Four sectorally based networks, including Aboriginal policy, agriculture, banking and women-centred policy, are analyzed to assess the extent of virtual policy networks' replication of real world policy dynamics.

The migration of people from valley to valley or from region to region, and, since the emergence of the nation state, from country to country, is an acknowledged characteristic of humanity. The motives behind population movements fall into two broad categories: a desire for an improved lifestyle based upon economic betterment and a need to escape from persecution and oppression stemming from intolerance and discrimination whether practised or merely condoned by those in authority. Frequently, these fundamental motivations explaining population movements may be interrelated and therefore difficult to separate. Economically motivated migrants have comprised the majority of persons throughout the ages who have pulled up roots to relocate. Nevertheless, that portion of mankind which has felt compelled to flee to avoid physical danger resulting from official or societal attitudes and policies has constituted a significant portion of the migratory population. This article focusses on this latter category of persons, some of whom seek to enter and remain in Canada. The policy and administrative process governing the admission to Canada of these refugees, as well as an explanation and evaluation of the formulation and implementation of such processes will constitute the major thrust of thearticle.

The polls of the 2018 Quebec election forecast a close race between the two leading parties. The result, a clear victory of the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) over the Parti libéral du Québec (PLQ), was clearly at odds with the polls. We argue that when the polls get it wrong, it is important to determine whether there was a polling miss, in which the discrepancy is due to changing voter behaviour, or a poll failure, in which the problem stems from polling methodology. Our post-election poll shows that changing voter behaviour—last-minute shifts and the vote of non-disclosers—explains most of the discrepancy. These movements varied by region. We conclude that the Quebec 2018 election was among the worst polling misses in history but not necessarily a major poll failure.

The aim of this paper is to consider the connexion between social theory and research in the field of “industrial relations,” drawing particularly upon the empirical data which have been acquired by a sociological investigation of the city of Windsor, Ontario. Even a cursory investigation of a city like Windsor indicates certain tendencies to be at work in highly unionized towns which do not seem to be adequately encompassed by the existing literature of industrial relations. We are concerned here to define what these tendencies are, to suggest some of the inadequacies of existing theory to handle them and to indicate a more adequate theoretical basis for the discussion of them.

The traditional academic and research approach to trade unionism has always been that of economics, and it is usually within an economic framework that unionism is discussed. A sociologist, however, who approaches the subject for the first time, begins immediately to wonder why trade unions should have become, in our universities and research institutions, so exclusively matter for study by economists, whereas other social groupings in which men live and to which they give their time and their loyalties—churches, for example, or gangs, or families—have not excited the slightest interest on the part of that discipline. The answer to this question has its roots, it would seem, in the classical view that since everything in the market is a commodity, and labour is in the market, therefore labour is a commodity, and as such, has to be treated and studied by the academic discipline whose job it is to analyse market factors, of which labour costs are one.